A few days ago CreativeCow released their forth SuperMeet Magazine, packed with 315 pages of great content, check it here. One of the interesting articles was Michael Wohl’s Keys to the Kingdom. I like the virtuoso pianist analogy – who needs to know her keys and what notes they represent, the same with an editor. An editor should not be wasting time trying to figure out what is the right key or using a long set of keystrokes and mouse actions that could have been done with a single key.Michael talks about the reasons why the keyboard is better:
- Keyboards are Ergonomic. I would certainly agree if you had the appropriate Keyboard. However with Apple’s minimalistic designs I am not so sure that this is entirely accurate. I do agree that (especially when working on a 30″ screen) it can get sore trying to navigate the mouse pointer to certain locations when a single keystroke would have done.
- Keyboards are more Efficient. Oh definitely – the keys are always on the same location on the keyboard, while the mouse pointer can often be lost
wasting time trying to find it and ten drag it across half the world to where you want it. - Keyboards keep your Focus on the Content. Yes – if you are one of those editor who can spin 5 times and then hit F9 without fail (with your eyes closed). Well, I have to say – as a programmer – that you get into the know of where certain patterns are for so-called speed typing; probably the same with editing.
- Keyboards Expand your Vocabulary. I can vouch for this after going though Michael’s books a number of times.
- Keyboards Confound the Client. ha ha ha, and your non editor friends.
Here are the 5 Keyboard shortcuts that I use quite regularity:
- Shift – Z : Zoom to fit, I use it in the Timeline, viewer and canvas. It resizes the image or sequence to fill the viewable area.
- F9: Insert Edit. Inserts the clip from the viewer into the timeline at the position of the play head; pushing other clips on. Note that this is a simple case; there are other conditions for what track is selected and the position of other other things on other tracks that overlap the position of the playhead. Yada yada ya.
- X: Mark Clip. Sets the In and Out points of the sequence to the In and Out points of the clip in the selected track.
- F: Reveal Master Clip into View. Great for wanting to edit in other parts of a clip into different spots in the sequence.
- F6 + Track Nr: Selects the video track for the following edits to be applied to. E.g. if you need to insert the clip in the into track 2 : F6 + 2, F9
Got any get that you deem time saving?
[Image by ~Prescott]
